Charlie Hunnam in talks for Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim

May 10, 2011 - By Liam Goodwin

According to Deadline British actor Charlie Hunnam is in talks to play the lead role in Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim. Hunnam is best known for his role in Sons of Anarchy and auditioned for the role of Thor, but now he’s about to take on gigantic monsters that spawn out of the ground.

Guillermo del Toro moved ontoPacific Rim, which involves two different worlds, shortly after Universal bailed on At the Mountains of Madness due to budget concerns. Here are the plot details which emerged back in March:

The first is an alternate version of Earth in the near future, decades after a historic date in November 2012 when the first kaiju, a towering Godzilla-like beast, emerged from a hole in the Pacific Ocean and attacked the city of Osaka, Japan. The second is “The Anteverse,” another universe on the other side of that gaping portal, 5 miles below our ocean’s surface.

Since the first attack, the rim has been “spitting out” a variety of gigantic monsters at an increasing rate, which then stride out of the ocean and begin destroying sea-bordering cities, like Tokyo and Los Angeles. In order to combat these monstrous, otherworldly menaces, the military developed the “Jaeger” program, which trains teams of two pilots to jointly operate massive, building-sized mechanized suits of armor and high-tech weaponry

If previous reports are accurate Hunnam will play Raleigh Antrobus, a skilled pilot who is still wrestling emotionally with the loss of his co-pilot and biological brother, Yance, during a mission a year earlier. Raleigh is recruited to re-join a task force in Tokyo, where pilots are in demand, and teams with a 22-year-old female Japanese pilot called Mako Mori.

Whether the story is still set in Japan remains to be seen as monsters destroying Japanese cities following the devastating tsunami may be a sensitive issue, and there’s also the possibility of Warner Bros. wanting to ‘Americanize’ it, but I guess we’ll find out with further casting news.

Pacific Rim has already entered pre-production and the aim is to begin principal photography later this year for a summer 2013 release.